In all the years I've paid for Netflix, there has only one of its original series that I've ever come back to for a re-watch. I'm two episodes into the new season of Black Mirror, already disappointed by it, and I am already finding myself switching back to the best possible alternative; yet again, I am rewatching the 2018 limited series, Maniac.
Maniac is a sci-fi, dark-comedy drama about two sad people, Annie and Owen, who agree to take part in a radical drug and psychotherapy trial that promises to cure all mental ailments. Annie is a drug addict who sold away her privacy (in a very literal sense), and Owen is a schizophrenic failson from a family of crooked business tycoons. They both desperately need help, but live in a society where advanced technology only serves to precipitate personal problems instead of solving them. This is a world where sad little robots clean up the dogshit left on the sidewalk, and people pay to incubate themselves in metal pods simply to avoid seeing other people. The experimental treatment at the centre of the story is itself being run by a chainsmoking agoraphobic who sleeps in a customised office drawer, and the computer genius behind the project is a chronic masturbator who plugs himself into virtual reality pornography. Everyone is sad and lonely.
Maniac is the logical extension of our Deliveroo drones and internet addiction, anticipating a World driven to depression by the COVID lockdown, years before it even happened. Like the best dystopias, Maniac isn't a world that has a obvious solution such as "kill the evil regime". The show could have targeted our attention at big pharma, blaming our woes on a toxic corporate culture. But instead it takes a broader view; We are the society, we are the problem, we don't know how to help ourselves, and the help we offer to each other always comes with a price tag.
Maniac is the competent version of Black Mirror, with smarter written dialogue, better realised and sympathetic characters, and more thoughtfulness to its sci-fi technology themed parables. It is also often very funny, we can only laugh at its pitifully bleak alternate version of our world. It's a masterstroke in juggling silly and surreal concepts alongside heartfelt, down to earth drama, and absolutely worth your time.
Series The Blackest Mirror
In all the years I've paid for Netflix, there has only one of its original series that I've ever come back to for a re-watch. I'm two episodes into the new season of Black Mirror, already disappointed by it, and I am already finding myself switching back to the best possible alternative; yet again, I am rewatching the 2018 limited series, Maniac.
Maniac is a sci-fi, dark-comedy drama about two sad people, Annie and Owen, who agree to take part in a radical drug and psychotherapy trial that promises to cure all mental ailments. Annie is a drug addict who sold away her privacy (in a very literal sense), and Owen is a schizophrenic failson from a family of crooked business tycoons. They both desperately need help, but live in a society where advanced technology only serves to precipitate personal problems instead of solving them. This is a world where sad little robots clean up the dogshit left on the sidewalk, and people pay to incubate themselves in metal pods simply to avoid seeing other people. The experimental treatment at the centre of the story is itself being run by a chainsmoking agoraphobic who sleeps in a customised office drawer, and the computer genius behind the project is a chronic masturbator who plugs himself into virtual reality pornography. Everyone is sad and lonely.
Maniac is the logical extension of our Deliveroo drones and internet addiction, anticipating a World driven to depression by the COVID lockdown, years before it even happened. Like the best dystopias, Maniac isn't a world that has a obvious solution such as "kill the evil regime". The show could have targeted our attention at big pharma, blaming our woes on a toxic corporate culture. But instead it takes a broader view; We are the society, we are the problem, we don't know how to help ourselves, and the help we offer to each other always comes with a price tag.
Maniac is the competent version of Black Mirror, with smarter written dialogue, better realised and sympathetic characters, and more thoughtfulness to its sci-fi technology themed parables. It is also often very funny, we can only laugh at its pitifully bleak alternate version of our world. It's a masterstroke in juggling silly and surreal concepts alongside heartfelt, down to earth drama, and absolutely worth your time.